New KDS Experience Overview

In this Article:

• New KDS Experience Overview
• Enable the New KDS Experience
• Change the New KDS Experience Ticket Size
• Use the New KDS Experience
• Additional Resources

 
New Kitchen Display System (KDS) Experience Overview

Previously known as Grid View, Toast's new KDS experience enables greater functionality on the KDS to support advanced workflows for restaurants that are looking to streamline their kitchen operations and improve the speed of service. The new KDS experience helps kitchen teams keep service moving with a clearer, more flexible ticket experience. 

After enabling the new KDS experience, your team may notice that some parts of the KDS look or behave differently than before, but this update is designed to make that adjustment worthwhile by helping your kitchen team:

• See tickets more clearly with an updated UI. 
• Understand what needs action with helpful ticket details and indicators.
• Keep orders moving with tools that support how food moves across prep stations, expediters, runners, and other kitchen roles.
• Work in a way that fits your kitchen with ticket size options and workflow features that can support different service styles.
• Access the latest KDS improvements as Toast continues building new kitchen workflow features on the new KDS experience.
• View tickets in a fixed grid layout that makes it easier to scan the screen.

To accomplish this, the new KDS experience includes the following features:

• Grid View: A KDS ticket layout that displays tickets on a fixed grid. This provides a grid layout for kitchen tickets with a maximum number of tickets on a screen.
• Pagination: Indicates how many pages of tickets exist and can be tapped to move to a specific page quickly.
• Payment status: Displays whether the order was paid or unpaid.
• Preview tickets: Also known as "fire on next", see items as they are being inputted on the POS before the order is complete so the kitchen can start preparation even sooner. To learn more, see Enable Preview Tickets on KDS Device. 
• Dark Mode: Minimize brightness of the KDS screen at bars and reduce eye strain. 
• Runner fulfillment: An additional level of item fulfillment at Expeditor to track individual item status. To learn more, see Food Runner Fulfillment on KDS.
• Partial fulfillment indicator: An orange check mark that indicates when an item has been started or when an item that is routed to multiple prep stations is fulfilled by one prep station. 
• Assembly lines: The ability to sequence tickets from one prep stations to another. To learn more, see Use Assembly Lines With KDS.
• Load balancing and start queue: The ability to indicate when you start working on a ticket and dividing work between multiple prep stations. To learn more, see Set Up KDS Start Queue and Load Balancing.
• Bump bars: Use a bump bar with your KDS to make it easy to fulfill tickets when the KDS device is far away. To learn more, see Use a Bump Bar With Toast KDS.

The new KDS experience configured with Dynamic Ticket layout, light mode and seven columns

The new KDS experience configured with Grid layout, dark mode, seven columns and two rows
 
 

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Enable New KDS Experience

If you are an existing customer and you would like to determine which of your devices can utilize the new KDS experience, navigate to Reports > Kitchen operations > Kitchen overview in Toast Web. To enable the new KDS experience for multiple devices at your location, you can select Upgrade Remaining Devices on this page. 

To enable the new KDS experience from your KDS device, follow these steps:

1. From your POS main screen, navigate to Setup > Device Setup.
2. Under the Device Setup section, change the KDS View setting to New KDS.
   • Note: Some customers may still see New Grid View. 
     
     

The new KDS experience is the default option for all new customers. 

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Change Your Ticket Size

After the new KDS experience is enabled, you'll be defaulted to Dynamic as the ticket layout. You further customize how your tickets are displayed in the KDS Appearance setting within the overflow menu (three vertical dots) in the top right corner of your KDS.

There are several customization options to choose from:

• Ticket Layout: Dynamic or Grid layouts.
  • Dynamic layout has tickets of various lengths depending on how many items are on a ticket.
  • Grid layout has tickets that are aligned the selected Grid size so the view of tickets is more uniform. Longer tickets can expand multiple grid slots. 
  • If you're using a bump bar with your Toast KDS, the first 10 tickets will have the overlay for order fulfillment via the 1-10 numbered buttons on the bump bar. Learn more about using bump bars with your Toast KDS here: Using the bump bar - Toast Platform Guide.
• Columns: set the number of columns of tickets you see on the KDS device when the device is in landscape orientation
• Rows: Change the amount of rows available for Grid Layout. 
• Text Size: This sets the text size used by KDS tickets. You can choose Small, Medium, Large, or Extra large.
• Display Theme: Select Light or Dark Mode.

Note: If you need to customize items/modifier colors of your KDS tickets, please read this article: Customize the Appearance of KDS Tickets. Changing text size independently of ticket size is currently unavailable. 
 

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Use New KDS experience

For complete and detailed information on using the the new KDS experience please check out Toast's technical documentation: KDS Workflow Using Grid View.

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Additional Resources:

• Get Started on Kitchen Configuration
• Kitchen Display System - Toast Classroom On-Demand Training
• Get Help With KDS Tickets

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